


Down Down Down, Into the Depths I Go

by rightsidethru



Series: The Child of Frost and Flame [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Magic Canon, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Magic, Drowning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Professor!Peter Hale, Sixth Year!Stiles, Slytherin!Stiles, Steter - Freeform, Steter Network Monthly Prompt, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-29 18:46:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12091143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/pseuds/rightsidethru
Summary: Stiles has always disliked the water ever since he was a child.A mishap out on the Black Lake brings back memories he would have otherwise preferred to remain buried.(And Peter realizes that there's no going back after this. Not anymore.)





	Down Down Down, Into the Depths I Go

**Author's Note:**

> Steter Network September 2017 Prompt: Water
> 
> *
> 
> Song reference: [Watch/Listen!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2jFtRHjbPo)
> 
> This story follows immediately after [Mantle of Green & Crown of Silver](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836782).
> 
> [Casual Professor Peter Hale showing off his House pride.](https://www.instagram.com/p/BZBwz_XBZc-/) ;) (Thank you, HDHale, for giving me the head's up about Ian's IG post! <3)
> 
> *
> 
>  **WARNINGS/SPOILERS :** This part of the series touches upon parts of Stiles' childhood. Please be aware that mental illness, drowning, and child abuse are three elements that are addressed in this story. Claudia's illness ends up extensively affecting her mind and she abuses Stiles and attempts to drown him as a result. I want to make sure that my readers stay safe, so please keep in mind that this is very much a _Dead Dove: Do Not Eat_ scenario.

_Eyes in the dead still water_  
_Tried but it pushed back harder_  
_Cauterized and atrophied_  
_This is my unbecoming_  
_Knives in the backs of martyrs_  
_Lives in the burning fodder_  
_Cauterized and atrophied_  
_This is my unbecoming_  
“Unbecoming” – Starset

**

 _“The Sun is never alone as the light remains with him always. Even when he goes down sinking...sinking, the light drowns with him.”_    
― Munia Khan

**

While Beacon Hills was far enough North in California to sometimes get snow in the winter, the city—and its surrounding forests—didn’t get cold enough for any of the nearby bodies of water to ice over. For the most part, frost dusted the needle-like leaves of the prevalent pines, snow at times lay hidden within the hollows and tucked away within the shadows of the buildings that loomed over the small downtown of the city.

Watching as the Black Lake slowly began to freeze over during the course of the fall months, daydreaming out the window during class as ice crept farther and farther away from the shoreline as autumn turned its face towards the chill of winter, Stiles found himself fascinated by the sight: wondering, absently, how far the ice extended out over the lake, past his eyesight. Had the entirety of the water frozen over?

As curious as the amber-eyed teen had become about the Black Lake, he still hadn’t managed to find the time to venture down to the shoreline to see the thick layer for himself: personal projects distracted him from September to December, and he was oftentimes holed up in the library or curled in his four poster bed, paging through stacks of books as the transfer student took advantage of the wealth of information that was finally available to him in the Hogwarts Library.

So, too, Stiles was detained—more often than not—by the seventh and sixth year Slytherins who found him too uncouth, too smart-mouthed, too strange and plebian to match the portrayal that they had carefully cultivated for centuries. True enough, the Second Wizarding War had managed to change things in the world-- _some_ , anyway—but certain changes came at a snail’s pace and, when established behavior came rooted in tradition and family pride… those shifts in perception paired themselves with a glacier’s progress forward. In this particular case, the American’s refusal to adhere to those staunch masks came with… consequences: mostly duels hidden away from professors’ eyes, brutal and violent—and, more often than not, with Stiles walking away the victor.

But here and now: the winter holidays had officially ended the day before, and classes would once again resume on Monday. The sudden influx of students returning from their holiday, cheery with pleasure at the presents that they had received and more unyielding, too, from the time immersed in family traditions and expectations, meant that Stiles was soon enough chased from the Slytherin Common Room. The whiskey-eyed teen missed his father, the ache of a different sort of loneliness settling like a constant, broken bone deep within his chest, and it stroked a foul enough mood within him that it was just… better to avoid any and all conflict than remain around the students who were not his friends.

Stiles instead headed on down to the Black Lake, finally drawn through both time and opportunity to explore the fascination that had lingered on the outskirts of his attention for months.

The Hogwarts grounds looked like a fairytale, winter wonderland as the teen carefully made his way down the footpath that led towards the Forbidden Forest and the lake that bordered it: many of the Christmas decorations were still up—staff wanting the returning students to experience a little bit of the cheer that they had ensured to surround the students who had stayed for the holiday, wanting to gift the children with something bright and festive. With the snow that lay thick upon the ground and the dragon’s breath clouds of air that fogged over the Slytherin’s mouth, Stiles felt as if he had become a brief visitor of the Snedronningen‘s icy kingdom. 

Still, even as coated with snow as it currently was, the pathway that the transfer student followed was a familiar enough one, and it didn’t take long before the teen stood at the lake’s shoreline: the water was frozen over, an expanse of ice and crystal for as far as Stiles could see: still and white and seemingly dead, stopped in time until the warmth of spring coaxed the earth back to life.

It was the stillness that was the hook of the temptation for Stiles—

The Slytherin eyed the ice that had crept up onto the banks of the lake, making note of how thick it was even while clutching at the dirt beneath his feet: warmer, certainly, than the deep, dark depths of the lake.

“Don’t,” Kuugeki warned as it stepped up next to its summoner, bleeding out from the shadows of a rock overhang that stretched desperately out over the Black Lake. Primly, the nogitsune curled its nine, ebon-dark tails around its feet before glancing up at Stiles with tarnished-silver eyes. “Despite how it appears, the ice may have weak spots.”

“Maybe,” Stiles murmured in answer before turning his attention back out over the Black Lake. “But people go ice skating on lakes all the time in the colder states back home. It might be… fun.”

The field fox’s response to that came in a low, irritated chitter: sound obviously displeased—knowing, too, that the teen’s curiosity would prompt him to go onto the ice, to explore and perhaps experience something new that he had never done before. Not for the first time, the nogitsune wished that Stiles had made a friend or two here at Hogwarts: with others’ bright, eye-catching curiosity, the teen would be able to focus his attention elsewhere, thriving in company and around others instead of this… _insatiable_ desire to _know_ that had almost seemed to overtake the Sixth Year since he and his father had come here to Great Britain.

And as expected: Stiles ignored Kuugeki’s wary distrust of the ice that coated the Black Lake, instead taking one step forward—then two, then three—while carefully testing his weight with each movement, head tilting to the side as the teen listened for any concerning _groans_ from the ice. It was solid, however, and Stiles slowly began to smile: the expression was happier than the midnight-dark fox had seen in _months_ , and Kuugeki’s ears flicked down and back to lay flat against its skull as his contractor shifted to gain enough grip in his foothold, weight redistributing before shooting off; a propulsion spell and a decrease in the grip of the soles of his shoes had Stiles _gliding_.

He whooped cheerfully, head tilted back so that the winter sun caught his gaze and turned it a _blazing_ amber: lighthearted and filled with a joy that encouraged wide, sweeping gestures, and Kuugeki discovered that, despite his intrinsic nature, this human boy truly did matter to him.

As the nogitsune watched its summoner from the shore—

A hand punched through the ice, sickly green and tipped with long, spindly fingers: hungry and groping, with a malevolence to it that Kuugeki could sense from where he sat; the creature—the grindylow—wrapped its greedy fingers around Stiles’ ankle to drag the teen down within the freezing depths of the Black Lake, pulling him down, down, _down_ as the water clasped itself possessively over his head and swallowed the boy whole.

There had just been enough time for Stiles to snap his head in the nogitsune’s direction, Firewhiskey-hued eyes wide with fear and surprise. His mouth had parted, a hand had reached out towards the black fox, and the teen had managed to gasp out a frightened “ _Kuu_ \--“ before the water had taken him captive.

Kuugeki _roared_.

And the Earth trembled.

++

Stiles could not breathe.

Water was everything that he knew, everything that he was: it rushed into his gapingly wide mouth, pressing in against his lungs as he tried his hardest not to _inhale_ \--no matter how the _need_ for air made him desperate and trembling at the fact that he couldn’t hold his breath for much long. A dark figure, shadowy and menacing, hovered over him just above the water’s surface, and Stiles was resigned to the fact that no help would come from that quarter.

Another, second indistinct silhouette joined the first, pulling it far and away from the water, and the hands that had encircled the eight year-old’s throat suddenly released, jerking away as if stung.

Immediately, the child broke through the surface of the water, small, pale hands clutching at the bathtub’s rim as Stiles hauled himself over the edge: his breaths came in wheezing pants, choked-in water finally trickling past his lips as the dark-eyed boy gasped and coughed and choked—desperate and panicked to reassure himself that it was _safe to inhale_.

“Stiles. Stiles, buddy, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe,” Noah repeated, over and over again, turning it into a litany—a good luck spell—that he was desperate to make himself believe. The Auror’s blue gaze was wide with terror, and his hands trembled as they patted his son down: frantic to reassure himself that Stiles truly _was_ all right. That the worst had not happened, and the Auror had arrived just in time to stop it from becoming a nightmare come true. “You’re okay, son. You’re okay. Mama didn’t mean it, Stiles. You’re safe now. _She didn’t mean it._ ”

Not knowing what part of his father’s reassurances finally broke through the numb fog that had taken over his mind, the child shuddered roughly, tremor wracking his entire body, and buried his small hands in his Noah’s Auror robes: clinging tightly, grip white-knuckled and terrified, even as the first sob crested the dam.

Noah clutched his son to his chest, running fingers through the boy’s drenched hair—murmuring promises of safety, nicknames, and endearments, offering the safety that came from his presence while Stiles continued to sob, nearly hysterical in his fear.

Claudia watched it all, gaze reptilian and assessing and _alien_ , never saying a word as Stiles’ too-wide eyes met her own dark ones and Noah crooned reassurances against the shell of the boy’s ear.

++

_Hush, little baby--_  
_Don’t say a word…_

++

“No! No, no, no nono _nononono_! No, Mama! NO!”

Stiles twisted and pulled and tugged, little hands frantically scrabbling at the ironclad grip that his mother had around his forearm. Tears fell unheeded from his eyes, streaking his cheeks in salt and water, saline thick upon his lips as he sobbed and scratched at Claudia’s hand.

Terror clung to his heart, creeping tight and thick and smotheringly encompassing around his chest—making it harder and harder to breath, until the child’s breaths came quick and panting, wheezing with the fear he felt as Stiles’ mother dragged him through their home. Noah wasn’t due home for hours yet: and this Stiles knew for _certain_ because his father had finally taught him how to read a clock after days of begging the Auror to do so—only feeling safety at _knowing_ when his father would return.

Which meant that, until then, Stiles was left alone with his mother.

He wailed, sound broken and vulnerable and heartbroken, and slammed his free hand ineffectually against Claudia’s arm, her side, anywhere Stiles could reach: nothing shifted her grip, however, and the child’s mahogany eyes went dark and wide with terror as she began to drag him towards the bathroom.

“ _NO, MAMA!_ ” Stiles screamed, horror lacing every word as he realized that, without Noah’s protection by being _near_ , there was nothing stopping Claudia from putting Stiles in the bathtub yet again—no one around to pull her off of him before it was too late, either.

“ **NO!!** ”

Terror and the marrow-deep ache of _betrayal_ \--this was his _Mama_ , why was she trying to hurt him, Daddy had promised that she hadn’t _meant it_ , Daddy had _promised_ that he was _safe_ \--came together as a driving force, inevitable as a tsunami as it rushed over it in a crashing, devastating sort of wave: and Stiles reached _deep_ , as deep as he could, until fingertips brushed over what felt like a miniature sun settled as a foundational pivot within his chest.

The sun _burned_ hot and blindingly bright, and it felt like the child’s skin burned away until there were only bones left to grasp the little ball of light. It _hurt_ , more than anything else that Stiles had ever before felt, made the marrow in his bones ring as his fingers finally managed to tighten around the light—

And the sun went supernova.

Magic exploded out from Stiles in a concussive wave, gleaming and bronze and edged with the smallest hint towards a bloody crimson, and the force slammed into Claudia just as she finally managed to reach the doorway to the bathroom. The accidental magic was powerful enough to throw her in the air, spinning ‘round from the unrelenting pressure of the wave, and Stiles’ mother slammed into the far wall: the boy could hear the distinctive _crack!_ of his mother’s head hitting the tile before slumping down to the ground—sluggishly bleeding from a wound at her temple. She was breathing, though, still alive but not stirring—and the _relief_ that Stiles felt at that fact alone was overwhelming—and the child quickly scooted away from Claudia before turning and running towards the living room and the fireplace set in the far corner.

The entire bowl of Floo Powder was dumped into the fireplace, and Stiles’ sobbed “Auror Noah Stilinski!” was barely understandable. Perhaps it was decipherable enough, however—or perhaps it was the bout of accidental magic still at work—because the amber-eyed boy was soon enough stumbling into his father’s office and into his arms. Stiles _sobbed_.

\--but the feeling of safety no longer came as Noah cradled his son to his chest.

++

Stiles had long ago lost hope over either Healer or No-Maj doctor ever finding a cure for his mother’s sickness.

It ate away at her sense of self, her perceptions: it warped how she interacted with others, her relationships, her values and, at times, intelligence. The doctors were all apologetic, grimacing as they explained to Stiles’ father that they had done everything that they could think of, everything that _could_ be done, but the frontotemporal dementia could not be stopped—and it would continue to eat away at her brain.

It was true enough, even though Noah and Stiles both knew the truth of the matter: Claudia’s magic had twisted itself, tangled and thorny, within her; without the regular outlet that came of being _used_ , his squib mother’s magic had turned against her and was breaking her down—body and soul—piece by piece. The progression was inevitable and unstoppable, though the No-Maj’s medicine had been able to slow the progression down from the anticipated months to years.

The end would still be the same, though:

And, though he would never say it aloud—would never admit it to his father, selfishness and pity keeping the thoughts and words locked away—Stiles could only feel an overwhelming sense of _relief_ at the knowledge that it would eventually end. Perhaps not today. Perhaps not tomorrow. But someday—and someday soon.

“ _Get out._ ”

The words were hissed, soft with the promise of violence. The boy started in surprise and fear as the syllables broke the silence of the room, and Stiles jerked his gaze from the window that looked out over the hospital’s small garden to meet a dark, malevolent-rich gaze. He swallowed, scalp pricking with fear.

“Get out! Get out—get out or I’ll _kill you_. Get out or I’ll tell Noah that you tried to kill me! _You’re trying to kill me!_ **HELP!** He’s _trying to kill me_!!”

Stiles stumbled out of the bedside chair, backing frantically away towards the door even as Claudia’s hysterical shrieks got louder and louder, higher-pitched with each and every cry. His mother attempted to lunge towards him, fingers curled into sharp claws as she reached for his eyes: intent to do harm, to hurt her son, screamed out in every gesture; there was so much _hate_ within her, and it was that very moment that Stiles realized that the mother that used to sing him songs, used to read to him, used to explain what she was doing as she cooked-- _his_ mother, the mother that he had _loved_ \--was well and truly gone and there was no getting her back.

The door opened at the boy’s back, and the nurse stepped past him to immediately work on getting Claudia carefully restrained, straps cinching closed to keep the ill woman’s down at her sides. Pausing when Claudia was nearly completely restrained, Melissa McCall offered Stiles a strained but sweet smile. “Go into the lobby area, Stiles,” she ordered gently, catching his mother’s hand before it could strike out. “I’ll call you back in once she’s sedated and calmer, okay? Scott’s there, too, and I know he’d appreciate some help with his reading homework.”

“…okay.”

Silent and shaken, despair heavy along the bottom of his stomach, Stiles slipped completely from his mother’s room to do as Mrs. McCall had requested of him. Scott practically lit up once he caught sight of Stiles, and the whiskey-eyed boy answered with a trembling smile of his own.

Still… it was nice to be wanted.

Even if it was just for a little while.

++

Noah was late in picking Stiles up from the hospital.

Visiting hours had ended long before, but none of the nurses or doctors came in to ask the child to leave: Melissa had let her coworkers know that the boy was still there, was waiting for his father, and Claudia had been admitted to the hospital long enough by now that the employees were aware of the family situation. Oftentimes, there was pity in the nurses’ eyes as they spoke to Stiles. He didn’t know whether he was grateful for the emotion—or if he resented it. Either way, he typically avoided their gazes to look down at the linoleum at his feet, staring at scuffed and old sneakers.

Here, now, the hospital was slowly quieting for the night: employees were wrapping up their shifts, preparing things for the nurses and doctors who would soon enough be clocking in. Dinner had been served hours ago, and the hallways echoed with the soft murmur of televisions from rooms that had their doors propped open.

The scent of disinfectant stung the boy’s nose, and Stiles tried to tell himself that that was the reason why the corners of his eyes pricked with the threat of tears: gaze going wavery as tears surged, only to be blinked back.

For the first time in days, Claudia was still within the bed, chest rising and falling steadily with each and every one of her breaths; Stiles watched the up-and-down-up-and-down movement—as steady as the turning of the tide—with a hawk’s gaze, though it appeared as if his mother truly was asleep and not pretending at lack of consciousness.

Moonlight softened the damage that the illness had done, features ravaged—cheeks sunken and hollow, skin tinged a deathly gray-ish white, so much so that his mother so often reminded him of a skeleton in the bright afternoon light—but echoing more thoroughly back to the woman that Stiles had remembered and loved, once upon a time ago.

There was a sort of resignation that came with knowing that the boy would never get that woman back: she might as well have been dead and buried, perhaps even from the very first moment that she had turned on him and had tried to drown her son when Stiles had been five. The sting of betrayal had always been embedded from that time onwards—burrowing deep to always remain a heavy weight around his heart. Stiles did not trust his mother.

He wondered, too, if he actually loved her anymore.

She was… she was different. She tried to hurt him almost every time she saw Stiles.

His father looked away, instead caring for the damage his wife wrought, and constantly tried to reassure his son that his mother loved him, that she didn’t mean it, that it wasn’t her fault, that things would change and get better—with the next treatment. And the one after that. And the one after that after that after that: and endless litany of _after that_ s, things that Stiles had grown deaf to.

This wasn’t his mother. The thing staring out at him nowadays was alien and cruel in its determination to hurt him.

Stiles couldn’t help but wonder, as well, how _his_ mother would have reacted at seeing what she would later become: the woman he remembered, memories sepia toned and tasting of love, would have been horrified. Would have done anything and everything to avoid the inevitable.

 _This was not his mother_.

The boy’s fingers curled tightly around Claudia’s own, her grip remaining slack as she barely stirred in answer to the tightening hold. She was heavily sedated, dosed with pain killers and anti-psychotics, and she was everything that the child’s mother _was not_.

Stiles _hated_ her in that moment, at least admitting that stinging truth to himself: hated what he had been denied, hated the happy future he should have had, hated the fact that his mother had been born a squib and that her magic had turned against her on an intrinsic, soul-deep level. Hated this pale shade of a creature that raged against the world—against him—and did him harm. Hated that his father had allowed things to progress this far. Hated that there was still this sense of _obligation_ because this woman was supposed to be Stiles’ _mother_ and she _wasn’t_ \--and Stiles _wanted it to end_.

His fingers clung to Claudia’s, nearly bruising in the force of their hold, and the boy reached out to that burning, little sun that had spiraled out into newborn galaxies, endless and limitless and _powerful_ , and the child _tugged_ , curling the smallest of strands towards him.

Fear and regret and _rage_ and hurt and _betrayal_ lodged themselves in his throat, but Stiles still whispered two words that he had once read in one of his father’s case reports, and the boy _whipped_ the strand of magic out and away from him, sharp and punishing and as _bloody_ as an open, weeping wound.

“ _Avada Kedavra._ ”

The heart monitor flatlined.

++

Kuugeki’s roar made the Earth tremble, reality shuddering at the oppressive wave of _malevolence_ that exploded outwards from the Black Lake. Peter turned around at the first spike of cruel intent, falling to one knee in the thick snow as the nogitsune’s rage crested over him: it was overwhelming, unsettling so, power spreading and growing heavier and heavier until even gravity seemed a mere, unnecessary and light pressure in comparison—and it made the professor wonder, perhaps not for the first time, at just how strong the nine-tailed fox truly was.

If Peter was honest with himself, he didn’t think that he wanted to find out. Not unless he had months of planning to support him and a trap that was impossible to escape from to pair with a meticulous set-up: back-ups upon contingencies upon plans that were stacked to ensure they would fall in just the right amount of patterns to trickle out in a Domino effect…

But that was neither here nor there—for now—and, shaking his head to shrug off the stilled terror response, instinctive sort of reaction, Peter shoved himself back to his feet and _ran_. There was no conceivable reason as to why Kuugeki had lashed out in such a way—unless Stiles was somehow injured, and it was serious enough that the teen had been unable to deal with the danger himself without getting hurt.

So the professor ran and _ran_ , dodging trees that blurred to a muted green-and-brown kaleidoscope of colors around him as he streaked away from the creature he had been tracking for the groundskeeper; it didn’t take long before the werewolf was breaking past the outlying trees that made up the borders of the Forbidden Forest, and it was then easy enough to see the field fox despite the distance that remained between the both of them: enlarged to the size of a draft horse, nine tails whipping around its midnight-dark body. The nogitsune’s silver eyes were alight with wrath and power, blazing with the promise of pain to come as it dug desperately at a hole in the ice.

It didn’t take long before Peter realized what had happened.

The ‘wolf’s motions were stilted, shock and fear brushing against the edges of his mind: it was tempting to deny the evidence before his eyes, but Peter had long ago stopped lying to himself. The older man fell to his knees next to the Dark creature, shifting just enough to begin tearing away chunks of ice as his eyes flared crimson at the thought that losing Stiles—the teen that fascinated and intrigued him, whose summons had granted him with the power that had been denied to him upon his family’s deaths—was currently a very real possibility.

“How long?” Peter asked, awareness razor-sharp and narrowing down to the task set before both Dark creatures: cognizant of the snarl that made his voice gravelly and barely able to be understood even as his claws made quick work of the ice beneath him.

“Two. Maybe three minutes,” the nogitsune answered, tone of voice so incredibly cold: a promise of things to come if it didn’t manage to retrieve its master. Throughout it all, the fox continued to tear away large portions of the ice, clearing enough space so that two bodies could easily dive down into the water—or pop back up, breaking the surface to gasp for air.

Just as Peter reached for the hem of his shirt to strip out of it, preparing to dive in after the submerged Slytherin, the Black Lake came alive with the metallic gleam of a bronze light: flaring as bright as a sparking sun, the ice shuddered in reaction as power slammed out after the blindly explosive force. Magic roared along all of Peter’s senses, leaving him deaf and blind, mute with an instinctive _fear_ that urged him to bare his throat, Alpha or no, and a bleached-white hand shot out of the water to clutch desperately at the edge of the hole that the nogitsune and Peter had made.

Almost immediately after, Stiles’s torso breached the water’s surface, already gasping for air and coughing out the water that had gotten in his lungs: trembling from adrenaline and shock and the cold, lips tinged a blue that would have so perfectly matched the ‘wolf’s old Beta eyes, and the teen managed to haul himself halfway out of the water before his arms gave out beneath him.

“ _Stiles!_ ” Peter snarled out, digging still-clawed fingers into the waterlogged fabric of the teen’s cloak; the professor began dragging the boy the rest of the way out of the Black Lake, ignoring how icy water stung against the too-warm heat of his skin: there was reassurance, as well, that nothing would follow after the boy—not with how carefully Kuugeki guarded the teen’s back, wrathful gaze trained upon the water’s surface even as the werewolf carried Stiles to shore.

The palm of the ‘wolf’s hand was a brand against Stiles’ skin, inferno hot and searing him to the marrow—a stark contrast to the icy water that Stiles had just escaped from. The Slytherin shuddered against Peter’s chest, curling his fingers briefly in the professor’s robes: allowing himself that brief moment of vulnerability as he banished old memories back to the dusty, shadowy corners of his mind that the boy typically managed to keep them confined to.

He was alive—still—and had managed to once again avoid drowning. That was all that mattered to Stiles, no matter the fact that nightmares would be a thing he’d have to deal with over the upcoming days—weeks, perhaps months. _He was alive_ and the grindylow (his mother) was not. That was the important thing.

“P-Professor…?” Stiles asked, teeth chattering as the cold seemed to finally catch up to him in body-wracking shudders, color bleaching from all of his limbs: a trembling mess of ice and adrenaline and shock, though coherent enough to understand that Peter being here was… unexpected.

The werewolf’s clawed thumb brushed over the frantically beating pulse of Stiles’ artery, lingering for a moment longer than what was appropriate to ensure that his scent stayed, as well: the near-call sparking instincts and desires that Peter had kept very thoroughly collared up ‘till now.

“Your summons isn’t the subtlest of creatures,” Peter explained as he wrapped his cloak around the amber-eyed teen, bundling Stiles up as well as he could for the moment, murmuring the words to a warming spell—both onto the thick fabric and as he chafed his hands over the American’s goosepimpled limbs: staving off the more dangerous effects of shock as quickly and as thoroughly as he could for the moment—and satisfying that _need_ to touch and to leave behind his scent, instincts bleeding over to flare blood-red within Peter’s gaze though Stiles never commented on the shift in color.

At the explanation, however, Stiles offered up a small, unhappy sound and moved within the ‘wolf’s hold just enough to rest his forehead along the defined arch of Peter’s collarbone. He gave another shudder—this time one of relief (he was alive! _he was alive!!_ )—and closed whiskey-tinted eyes. “Just... let me stay. For just a minute, okay? Just a minute.”

Peter knew that he really should be getting Stiles up to the castle—at the very least, the teen would be expecting an overnight stay in the Infirmary—but… the boy fit so sweetly within the curve of his arms, and there was a spike of hungry possessiveness that thrummed through marrow and bone, echoing the low growl of his wolf, as Stiles’ grip on Peter’s shirt tightened and went white-knuckled.

The Alpha dipped his head, stubbled cheek brushing against Stiles’ own and lowering further until Peter could bury his nose at the crook of the teen’s throat: he _breathed_ , scenting and being scented in turn, and with the relief of knowing that the teen was finally, truly safe, Peter admitted a truth to himself that he had been carefully avoiding for weeks now: consciously or subconsciously, it no longer mattered—the truth was before his eyes. Fascination and interest, amused intrigue and a desire to _know_ , to _learn_ had shifted to something darker, more primal in its need: there was desire and need and the urge to possess and _keep_. The boy was his, and there was no denying what Peter wanted now that he was faced with the possibility that losing Stiles was a very real thing.

Peter’s lips brushed fleetingly over the pale column of Stiles’ throat and, in turn, the teen reached up with his free hand to bury his fingers in the short hairs at the nape of the werewolf’s neck: otherwise still against Peter, Stiles took the necessary opportunity to just _be_.

He was all right.

He was alive.

His mother was dead and gone—

And Stiles could _breathe_.

::fin::

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/comments are loved! <3
> 
> *
> 
> Come and [say hi](http://rightsidethru.tumblr.com/). :)


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